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Agriculture exports, at $20.7 billion in 2017, have overtaken the arms industry as Russia's No. 2 earner. Wheat makes up about a quarter of the total. Russia harvested an area of wheat almost twice as large as the U.S. in the year ended in June, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture

https://www.wsj.com/articles/grain-is-our-oil-russia-is-best...

Russia was the world's largest exporter of wheat in 2017-18:

https://www.export.gov/article?id=Russia-Agricultural-Equipm...

Hmm? Where you've got that? They're doing quite fine. In fact Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world...

Perhaps your sources confuse them with USSR or even SK?

It's not Stalin's USSR anymore.